# University Majors



## Flora (Jun 16, 2012)

Well, guys, it's summer! And since i'm going to college in the fall, I got suddenly incredibly curious about what you all are studying/going to study!

So, basically, post/talk about what you'll hopefully get a degree in! And, for the younger members, what you might study in the future.

Uh, so I'm the weird one who decided "hey, studying Musical Theater might be fun," so that's what I'm getting my degree in. Maybe I'll get on Broadway eventually; who knows?


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## Harlequin (Jun 16, 2012)

In September I'll be heading back for the third year of my biology degree. It's pretty awesome, biology. So far I've done more to specialise in genetics/genomics/that kind of area than in any of the others; next year I hope to further specialise and study developmental genetics/biology. Fun times.


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## Adriane (Jun 16, 2012)

I was pre-law for a year, then switched to music education for three. And now I'm a fine arts major with a concentration in composition. Because I want to starve or something, yes. Oh, and I'm now minoring in women/gender studies, again because starving.


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## Minish (Jun 16, 2012)

I'm doing a joint in anthropology and sociology! :o I'll be going back to do my second year soon for more complex stuff. Not unexpectedly the two complement each other well.

My second (third?) choice would definitely be linguistics, which I only minor in. :( I love it and it's great.


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## Music Dragon (Jun 16, 2012)

Engineering physics here. I keep asking myself if it's the right choice for me; the theory is interesting, but I'm not sure if it's what I want to do for a living. But it's as sound a choice as any, I suppose. If I do change my mind, I'll probably head into psychology instead.


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## Datura (Jun 16, 2012)

Double-majoring in German and Urban Studies. Urban Studies at my school is an interdisciplinary major with courses from Political Science, Geography, Sociology, Urban Planning, and History.


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## Murkrow (Jun 16, 2012)

I'm doing maths, which is pretty interesting! It's really surprising to me how learning obvious facts in a different way makes you look at them differently. Like the fact that pi is less than 6. It was obvious before but it makes more sense now!

There are lots of kind of maths I can go into but I'm not entirely sure what I want to get into just yet. Though I've decided not to take any statistics next year.


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## opaltiger (Jun 16, 2012)

Biology. No idea what I'm specialising in yet. :D


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## ultraviolet (Jun 16, 2012)

Creative Industries Bachelor, Animation major, possibly videogame design and culture minor.


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## Tailsy (Jun 16, 2012)

english because it's the best and all of your degrees are smelly and rubbish.


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## Light (Jun 16, 2012)

I'll be majoring in Architecture, and, despite my academic advisor's flabbergasted looks and attempts at dissuasion, I _might_ be able to pull off a minor in computer science and japanese. (Thank god for AP credits clearing up my schedule of GED's)


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## Eifie (Jun 16, 2012)

Computer Science, with a... something in math. I don't know how much of my degree I want the non-overlapping math to take up yet; I think a few months in I'm going to discover that I have absolutely no aptitude for math whatsoever and I don't know what I'd study then. :p


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## Aisling (Jun 16, 2012)

I'm going to be starting my second year of elementary education. Unlike most of my friends, I came out of my freshman year relatively unscathed and _not _a year behind!


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## Kinova (Jun 16, 2012)

Just finished my first year of English and Creative Writing! It's pretty fun I guess. (Plus I may be able to do a CW dissertation, which sounds good to me.)


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## Phantom (Jun 16, 2012)

I was in for Law Enforcement, dropped it, picked up EMT/Paramedic, dropped that. 

Currently in limbo, but thinking of getting in for working in the nursing home again.


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## Blastoise Fortooate (Jun 16, 2012)

Umm, my running plan is to go to one of the very very few schools in the US that give degrees in ethology, AKA animal behavior.

I JUST DO NOT KNOW YET though help me


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## Autumn (Jun 16, 2012)

Double major in music therapy and psychology (seeing as how majoring in psych is a requirement for music therapy).

My mom seriously wants me to consider a major in statistics or some sort of science (prominently physics, chemistry or computer science) though, since I'm extremely good at those subjects (well idk bout statistics since I haven't taken it but some of the projects I've done in my free time kind of indicate something that could be useful in the field, and I have a terrific time working on these projects) and tend to enjoy them. If music therapy doesn't seem like something I'd want to do for the rest of my life and neither does psychology then I'll look into one of the other fields.

There's a _lot_ of fields I know I'd be good at and I'd probably enjoy but ultimately I have no clue which one to go for :/


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## Flazeah (Jun 16, 2012)

French and German because languages are fun. I'm about to enter third year (which is the year abroad; I'm going to France and then Germany). I chose my languages initially mainly for the funsies and was wondering a tiiny bit if I wanted to become an interpreter, but pretty sure I don't want to do that and I'm not positive I even want a particularly language-orientated job. (I know that technically, loads of jobs are relevant to/can involve languages, but a lot of my job ideas have pretty much nothing immediately to do with them.) Part of me wants to get an okay job while I feverishly write the next best-selling book and then luxuriate in my millions. Just in case this doesn't happen, I'm thinking of back-ups.


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## Autumn (Jun 16, 2012)

Flazeah said:


> Part of me wants to get an okay job while I feverishly write the next best-selling book and then luxuriate in my millions. Just in case this doesn't happen, I'm thinking of back-ups.


write a _FRENCH OR GERMAN BESTSELLER_ :ooo


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## Dannichu (Jun 17, 2012)

Datura said:


> Urban Studies at my school is an interdisciplinary major with courses from Political Science, Geography, Sociology, Urban Planning, and History.


That sounds so cool :D

I graduated last summer with a BA in Sociology, which is probably even more useless than English, of What Do You Do With A BA In English? fame. What it is good for, though, is getting on to a MA Sociology course and because I'm brilliant/my lecturers love me, it's being paid for by the same uni. 

My plans for next year are to work and earn some money while thinking about what I want to do with my life. Near the top of the list of possibilities is to do a PhD in Sociology at the same uni, go on to lecture Sociology at the same uni, and then after a long time, to die and be buried somewhere in the uni grounds. Sociologically.


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## opaltiger (Jun 17, 2012)

Blastoise Fortooate said:


> Umm, my running plan is to go to one of the very very few schools in the US that give degrees in ethology, AKA animal behavior.
> 
> I JUST DO NOT KNOW YET though help me


There's no need to get a degree specifically in ethology. It's much easier, and probably more helpful, to do a general biology degree and specialise in topics that interest you as you progress - and that allows you to change direction if you discover ethology isn't really for you.


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## Tailsy (Jun 17, 2012)

english isn't useless!!!!!!! it's fun and cool and versatile and it can kick ur degree's butt in a fight ok.


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## Harlequin (Jun 17, 2012)

opaltiger said:


> Biology. No idea what I'm specialising in yet. :D


Which bits are you interested in, anyway? I think I may be biased towards the genetics/molecular area just because of how Cardiff's School of Biosciences works at the moment. There's a strong focus on genetics/molecular/cell biology here at the moment and those modules tend to have the better lecturers and planning an all that jazz (but those things are cool though0.



opaltiger said:


> There's no need to get a degree specifically in ethology. It's much easier, and probably more helpful, to do a general biology degree and specialise in topics that interest you as you progress - and that allows you to change direction if you discover ethology isn't really for you.


Seconding this! I think if you did a more general biology course you'd be able to experience more of biology, and because of your more general study of biology you'll be able to look at and explore more fields (including ethology if you want!), which could lead to interesting job opportunities. Plus other disciplines can be very interesting if you take a little time to look into them!


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## opaltiger (Jun 17, 2012)

> Which bits are you interested in, anyway? I think I may be biased towards the genetics/molecular area just because of how Cardiff's School of Biosciences works at the moment. There's a strong focus on genetics/molecular/cell biology here at the moment and those modules tend to have the better lecturers and planning an all that jazz (but those things are cool though0.


Anything with strong links to evolutionary theory; evo-devo looks interesting, and I'm doing something vaguely related this summer, but then I also like straight-up whole animal biology like behavioural ecology. So I'm really not sure. :P


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## Adriane (Jun 17, 2012)

Polymetric Sesquialtera said:


> Double major in music therapy and psychology (seeing as how majoring in psych is a requirement for music therapy).


If I had any sense, I'd be doing music therapy.


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## Dannichu (Jun 17, 2012)

Twilight Sparkle said:


> english isn't useless!!!!!!! it's fun and cool and versatile and it can kick ur degree's butt in a fight ok.


I forgot, of course.


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## Vipera Magnifica (Jun 17, 2012)

I'll be starting my *Physics* undergraduate studies in August. I'm particularly interested in research and theory, so I'm definitely going on to get my Master's and Ph.D.


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## Blastoise Fortooate (Jun 17, 2012)

opaltiger said:


> There's no need to get a degree specifically in ethology. It's much easier, and probably more helpful, to do a general biology degree and specialise in topics that interest you as you progress - and that allows you to change direction if you discover ethology isn't really for you.





Harlequin said:


> Seconding this! I think if you did a more general biology course you'd be able to experience more of biology, and because of your more general study of biology you'll be able to look at and explore more fields (including ethology if you want!), which could lead to interesting job opportunities. Plus other disciplines can be very interesting if you take a little time to look into them!


yay advice! :O This actually makes a lot of sense and I'm not sure why it did not occur to me sooner.


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## Datura (Jun 17, 2012)

Dannichu said:


> That sounds so cool :D


It really is! I had actually declared Geography (with an urban concentration) prior, but after meeting with my Geography advisor I realized that there were far too many required environmental science courses for my liking, so I browsed the undergraduate catalogue for something else. The major is _perfect_, because I can really just take whatever kind of social science course I want. I've already taken courses on urban environmental problems, queer migrations in cities, general urban geography, and the history of Olympic cities. Next fall I'm taking a course that lets me volunteer at either an LGBT community center or women's center/Planned Parenthood type of deal. It's so awesome. :D

And to top it all off I'm in the process of applying to study abroad in Frankfurt a year from now. I get to take urbanism classes auf Deutsch!


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## sovram (Jun 17, 2012)

Double major mathematics and computer science. I was doing computer engineering, then decided I wanted to do maths forever while taking a history of mathematics course. Which was incredible.


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## glitchedgamer (Jun 17, 2012)

Started my Computer Science major this past spring. Off to a very... rough start, but honestly I never thought I'd be starting any major.


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## Dannichu (Jun 17, 2012)

Datura said:


> It really is! I had actually declared Geography (with an urban concentration) prior, but after meeting with my Geography advisor I realized that there were far too many required environmental science courses for my liking, so I browsed the undergraduate catalogue for something else. The major is _perfect_, because I can really just take whatever kind of social science course I want. I've already taken courses on urban environmental problems, queer migrations in cities, general urban geography, and the history of Olympic cities. Next fall I'm taking a course that lets me volunteer at either an LGBT community center or women's center/Planned Parenthood type of deal. It's so awesome. :D
> 
> And to top it all off I'm in the process of applying to study abroad in Frankfurt a year from now. I get to take urbanism classes auf Deutsch!


That's amazing :D My university's pretty cool because it's good a really good Social Sciences department, and every lecturer there gets to run a module on one or more of their specialties (in addition to a few compulsory modules like Research Methods, which nobody really enjoys), so I've taken modules in the sociology of: religion, the body, race and ethnicity, food, work, gender and more I'm forgetting about. Sadly we don't get to do stuff like volunteer work as part of the course, although that's the uni's bureaucracy rather than the department.


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## Tarvos (Jun 17, 2012)

Frankfurt? Wonderful!


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## Butterfree (Jun 17, 2012)

I'm formally graduating with a B.S. in computer science next Saturday, and then I'm off to work full-time because monies. :D (Technically I'm already working full-time because my exams finished ages ago.)


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## Autumn (Jun 17, 2012)

Butterfree said:


> (Technically I'm already working full-time because my exams finished ages ago.)


What do you do?


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## Tailsy (Jun 17, 2012)

Dannichu said:


> I forgot, of course.


Exactly. English gets you all the shit!!!!!!! So obviously the way to go if you want people macking on ya.


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## bobandbill (Jun 17, 2012)

I'm into the third year of a science advanced degree (majoring in Physics and Computational Science). If all goes well I'll have my bacholars by the end of the year, and will probably do honours after that (another year). Undecided if I'd then go on with a Master/PhD after that or just go straight into industry though... I guess it will be something I will figure out in due course though, hopefully.


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## Harlequin (Jun 17, 2012)

opaltiger said:


> Anything with strong links to evolutionary theory; evo-devo looks interesting, and I'm doing something vaguely related this summer, but then I also like straight-up whole animal biology like behavioural ecology. So I'm really not sure. :P


That's fair! Our school is really biased towards non-ecological/zoological areas of biology (which is something I hadn't noticed until this year) so that's possibly coloured my choices. Still, I am going on a tropical ecology field course in Kenya next week so at least I'm not entirely locked into genes and genomes and ions and blah! Evolutionary biology is fascinating but Cardiff really doesn't have anything like that on offer, which is really sad.



Blastoise Fortooate said:


> yay advice! :O This actually makes a lot of sense and I'm not sure why it did not occur to me sooner.


I thought the same thing. Originally I wanted to do a genetics degree because I Wanted to Do Genetics, but then I was like "but a biology degree is so much more versatile..." and then I didn't regret my decision. So!


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## Butterfree (Jun 17, 2012)

Polymetric Sesquialtera said:


> What do you do?


Backend programming for an upcoming iPhone game.


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## Murkrow (Jun 17, 2012)

Butterfree said:


> Backend programming for an upcoming iPhone game.


That explains the annoyed tweets about facebook integration then :P


Sovram said:


> Double major mathematics and computer science. I was doing computer engineering, then decided I wanted to do maths forever while taking a history of mathematics course. Which was incredible.


I'm the other way around. I started off intending to do just maths, but now I've decided to a bit of computer science with mine.


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## Jolty (Jun 17, 2012)

in september i will be starting a BSc in computer animation

i forgot how majors and minors work over here so. that is all.


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## goldenquagsire (Jun 17, 2012)

Coming up to the end of my first year doing a BA in History! Enjoying it a hell of a lot, panicking slightly because I still don't know really what my specialism should be (I honestly find most history interesting, and I really liked the fact that my uni does 'survey courses' for the first year covering everything from 400AD onwards as well as various themes and historiography), but I have a mild preference for Medieval European or colonial history. I can very seriously see myself doing a postgrad in history if only so I don't have to enter the real world for an extra year but it's a little early to be thinking about that...


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## Datura (Jun 18, 2012)

High fives for all of the liberal arts majors. We're the minority here, apparently.


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## Shiny Grimer (Jun 18, 2012)

Psychology, particularly abnormal psychology.


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## -Chris- (Jun 19, 2012)

I have a degree in communications.  It was a really easy major.


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## surskitty (Jun 19, 2012)

I think I'm like halfway to an art degree.  :|a


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## Espeon (Jun 19, 2012)

I am doing BioVeterinary Science; it's like Veterinary Science and Biology's unwanted mongrel crossbreed. Doesn't let you be a vet but at some point in the future I will take the surgical world by storm! >:D


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## sovram (Jun 19, 2012)

Photo Finish said:


> I'm the other way around. I started off intending to do just maths, but now I've decided to a bit of computer science with mine.


There's definitely no shame in that. How far are you into the maths degree? 

And computer science -- what are you interested in? I pretty much know nothing about computer science right now, I can just kind of program in a very mediocre fashion in C++. But I made friends with a cool professor who works with robots (specifically robot vision I think) and I'm very passionate about AI, so I think that's where I want to go!


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## Murkrow (Jun 19, 2012)

Sovram said:


> There's definitely no shame in that. How far are you into the maths degree?
> 
> And computer science -- what are you interested in? I pretty much know nothing about computer science right now, I can just kind of program in a very mediocre fashion in C++. But I made friends with a cool professor who works with robots (specifically robot vision I think) and I'm very passionate about AI, so I think that's where I want to go!


Only just finished my first year. I'm about the same, very mediocre with C++ :P
The only CS options I could chose from next year were computer architecture and a course about the limits of computation. I took the latter because I'm interested more in the mathematics and programming rather than the logic behind why computers are built the way they are. I'm a bit bummed that there weren't any programming options though, since that's what I'd most like to do.


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## sovram (Jun 19, 2012)

Photo Finish said:


> Only just finished my first year. I'm about the same, very mediocre with C++ :P
> The only CS options I could chose from next year were computer architecture and a course about the limits of computation. I took the latter because I'm interested more in the mathematics and programming rather than the logic behind why computers are built the way they are. I'm a bit bummed that there weren't any programming options though, since that's what I'd most like to do.


My professor spoke briefly about computation in that history of mathematics course I was talking about -- it seems really interesting. Good choice, I'd say!


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## -Chris- (Jun 22, 2012)

I should add that what you major in doesn't necessarily define what you are going to do once you graduate.  Currently, I'm in graduate school in a completely different field from what I majored in.


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## shadow_lugia (Jun 25, 2012)

I'm only starting junior year of high school next school year, so I haven't exactly formed detailed plans for college yet. I have been looking around through the things that come in the mail, though, and I think that I would want a double major in Astronomy and Linguistics. Not sure what minor I would have, but probably something else interesting to me like Biology or Psychology.

The thing I'm mostly hesitant about with a Biology minor is I'm not sure if some sort of animal lab class would be required. We got to tour the animal labs at CSU for a field trip last year, and while the actual material was pretty interesting, and I'm not very grossed out by bones or plasticized organs, the smell in the main classroom was awful, not to mention the room with the beetles where the bones are cleaned...


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## Silverwing (Jul 8, 2012)

Right now I'm an intended Economics major but I haven't completely ruled out Computer Science yet, as either my only major, or a second major, or just a minor.

But then again, the CS department at my school is super competitive so I might get my self esteem destroyed with the first sequence CS class and back out of any further consideration. :D


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